Guns, money and revenge

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The collapse of his lucrative Iraq contract is not the first time Robert McVicker and his company, Morris Corporation, have ended up in a fight involving lawyers, guns and money. In Iraq, at least everyone got out alive. Nearly a decade ago, McVicker's partner, New Zealander David Morris, was murdered in Somalia in mysterious circumstances.

Morris had arrived in war-torn Mogadishu in 1992 with his two sons and an $83 million contract with the United Nations to feed 29,000 peacekeepers. They had won the contract on the back of their successful work for the UN mission in Cambodia. But Somalia quickly turned into a nightmare for the Morris family.

First Morris's 21-year-old son, Tyson, was shot dead in a fight with Somali bandits, along with two other staff. Then David Morris was kidnapped twice and held for ransom. Shortly before the UN pulled out of Somalia, in April 1995, he was captured again, and this time murdered, apparently by Islamic militants.

McVicker flew to Mogadishu to pick up his partner's body and fold up the operation. By then, the staff had shipped out their equipment to Mombassa in Kenya, a transit point on the way to Yemen, their next assignment. But with their gear, they included tonnes of UN equipment, including forklift trucks, cars, motorcycles, prefab buildings and shipping containers. Morris's staff were adamant the equipment was abandoned by the UN in Somalia and they salvaged it from a burial site where UN officers had disposed of it, anxious to keep it out of the hands of Somalia's war lords.

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But UN officials in Geneva launched a criminal investigation against Morris, the first time the UN had ever taken such action against a subcontractor. In 1997, under a formal complaint from the UN, Kenyan police searched Morris's ships in Mombassa harbour and seized about half a million dollars worth of UN gear. Soon after, Kenyan police filed criminal charges against McVicker, David Morris's surviving son, Arran, and his wife, Kerry Page. Unfortunately for Page, she was the only one of the three still in Kenya. Police hauled her off to jail.

At the time, McVicker was suing the UN for unpaid fees of $US20 million ($28.7 million) and he claimed the UN case against Morris was motivated by revenge. Nevertheless, the Kenyan government issued an extradition order to Australia for McVicker to return to Nairobi.

By the time the case came to trial in 1998, Australia refused to extradite McVicker and a British court also agreed that Arran Morris and Page, who had fled Nairobi, should not be forced to return. The UN was forced to drop the case, although it claims it succeeded in getting some of the equipment returned.

With the horrors of Somalia behind him McVicker, despite the loss of his partner, managed to steer Morris catering onto a highly profitable path and the company grew by leaps and bounds. Morris Corporation landed contracts from East Timor and Papua New Guinea to Saudi Arabia, serving oil companies and governments all over the world.

When Halliburton turned to Morris to service its biggest military catering contract in Iraq, few in the business were surprised. But few predicted the much heralded deal would end in another messy legal fight for the company.